| Twenty seven years after it was compiled, the apocryphal Stompin' Room 
        Only is finally released. The album, which suffers only from being the 
        seam album between Marshall Tucker's tenures at Capricorn and Warner Bros, 
        was recorded during the European tour in support of Carolina Dreams. Here 
        are 11 tracks by the original band -- with guests on a few -- with two 
        cuts from a Milwaukee 1974 show tacked on for good measure. This is Marshall 
        Tucker as they have never been heard on record. Like the Allmans, the 
        Tuckers were all about seamlessly expanding from one musical form into 
        another. Whereas studio versions of "Can't You See," "Take 
        the Highway," "Ramblin'," and "24 Hours at a time," 
        would weave elements of jazz, blues, honky tonk, gospel, and Appalachian 
        folk music into the body of a song, on these extended jamming excursions 
        they fully indulged their passions, winding in and out of genres without 
        seams or sudden shifts. On an elongated cover of B.B. King's signature 
        tune, "The Thrill Is Gone," with a number of guests including 
        Dickey Betts and Charlie Daniels (making for a four-guitar front line!) 
        as well as Jimmy Hall and Chuck Leavell, Chicago blues, jazz, and country 
        are all enmeshed simultaneously, as the hidden nuances in the song come 
        to the fore. On the gloriously long "24 Hours at a Time," Tom 
        Caldwell's bass moves through the various jazz eras as Daniels fiddles 
        his ass off to keep time with Toy Caldwell's knotty, razor-wire leads. 
        And for those fans of the Marshal Tucker Band whose gauge is the song, 
        "Can't You See," there isn't a better one on record or bootleg 
        that's better than this one. With its shuffling, funky backbeat, and Toy 
        Caldwell's impassioned vocal leading the charge to his burning solos, 
        it literally send chills up the spine. This is one of the few cases where 
        a found "lost" recording lives up its legend.  (by Thom Jurek, All 
        Music Guide) |